The depth of Sinatra’s spell [during Sinatramania] was best measured not in dollars but in newly minted words, whose roots were based around ‘Sinatra’ and ‘swoon.’ Sinatra became not just a proper name to conjure with, but a vocabulary—‘the most extravagant vocabulary ever constructed around one man,” as E.J. Kahn noted. Among the new press coinages were Sinatrance, Swoonheart, Sinatritis, Swoonology, Sinatralating, Swoonatra, Sinatraceptive, Swoonatrance, Sinatramania, Swoonatic, Sinatrick, Swoonster, Sinatruck, Swoonery, Sinatractive, Swoondoggler, Swoonism, Sinatraless, Screenatra, Sinatraism, Sinatraphile, Sinatraphobe, Sinatraddiction, Sinatradition, Sinatrish, Sinatrabugs, Sinatraltitude, Sinatraing, Sinatroops, and Sonatra…He was described variably as the Lean Lark, the Croon Prince of Swing, Moonlight Sinatra, Swoonlight Sinatra, the Swoon King, the Swing-Shift Caruso, the Sultan of Swoon, the Swami of Swoon, Mr. Swoon, the Larynx, the Svengali of Swing, the Bony Baritone, the Groovy Galahad, and Too-Frank-Sinatra.
-John Lahr, Sinatra: The Artist and the Man

Frankie leaving the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn. 1942 was the year "Sinatramania" took off. He bragged around this time that: "Nobody's ever been a bigger star than me. This'll never end."

In December of 1942 Frank Sinatra was booked for a series of shows at the Paramount Theater in New York City. The 27-year-old singer had recently parted ways with Tommy Dorsey and was unsure if he'd make it on his own. Much to his shock, a small army of teenage girls swarmed the theater on the first night and went absolutely crazy when he took the stage. "The sound that greeted me was absolutely deafening," Sinatra recalled years later. "I was scared stiff. I couldn't move a muscle." The fans were labeled "Bobby soxers" because they were forced to dance at clubs in their bobby socks so their shoes wouldn't damage the floor. This mania around Sinatra occurred more than 20 years before Beatlemania, and it was the country's first glimpse of how the teenage culture would evolve in the second half of the twentieth century._________________"Hey bird dog get away from my chick
Hey bird dog better get away quick
Bird dog you better find
A chicky little of your own ! "

The Columbus Day riot: Frank Sinatra is pop's first star
12 October 1944

On 12 October 1944, Frank Sinatra opened his third season at New York's Paramount theatre. It was Columbus Day, a public holiday, and the bobby-soxers turned out in force. The famed New York photographer Weegee (Arthur Fellig) was there with his camera and notebook, capturing the scene in hyperventilated prose.

"Oh! Oh! Frankie," he began, mimicking the girls' ululations. "The line in front of the Paramount theatre on Broadway starts forming at midnight. By four in the morning, there are over 500 girls … they wear bobby sox (of course), bow ties (the same as Frankie wears) and have photos of Sinatra pinned to their dresses …

"Then the great moment arrived. Sinatra appeared on stage ... hysterical shouts of 'Frankie ... Frankie'; you've heard the squeals on the radio when he sings. Multiply that by about a thousand times and you get an idea of the deafening noise."

For Weegee, this was another example of the human extremities that he documented with his instinct for the climatic moments in New York life: what he didn't mention was the fact that, after each performance, the Paramount was drenched in urine.

Like Rudolph Valentino's funeral in 1926, or The Wizard of Oz opening in 1939, the Columbus Day riot was a generation-defining media event acted out on Manhattan's streets: during the day some 30,000 frenzied bobby-soxers swarmed over Times Square in an exhilarated display of girl power.

The New Republic editor Bruce Bliven called it "a phenomenon of mass hysteria that is only seen two or three times in a century. You need to go back not merely to Lindbergh [Charles Lindbergh's first flight] and Valentino to understand it, but to the dance madness that overtook some German villages in the middle ages, or to the Children's Crusade." What was new was the power that one singer held, heralded by mass screaming, and the advent of the teenager as a social ideal. Sinatra was the first modern pop star.

Sinatra's fame had been steadily building. His breakthrough came in his first Paramount season in December 1942, when the theatre erupted with "five thousand kids stamping, yelling, screaming, applauding". These scenes only intensified during his return in May 1943. The mania overtook the hype: his press agents remembered hiring "girls to scream when he sexily rolled a note. But we needn't have. The dozen girls we hired to scream and swoon did exactly as we told them. But hundreds more we didn't hire screamed even louder. It was wild, crazy, completely out of control."

Although nearly 29 by October 1944, Sinatra was slightly built, nervous and youthful: "It was the war years," he later said, "there was a great loneliness. I was the boy in every corner drugstore, the boy who had gone to war."

In concert, he seduced his young audience. His bright blue eyes raked the crowd, singling out individuals so that he appeared to be singing for them alone, just one in a crowd of thousands. Matched to the ethereal kitsch of slow ballads such as Embraceable You, "The Voice" – as Sinatra was known – cast a spell that suspended time.

Sinatra's rise was unstoppable, for he filled a deep need. Bliven thought that the bobby-soxers at the Paramount "found in him, for all his youthfulness, something of a father image. And beyond that, he represents a dream of what they themselves might conceivably do or become."

In the mid-40s, Sinatra became a national figure of controversy and criticism. He was blamed for making young people lose "control of their emotions", and was attacked for being out of uniform: because of an injury, he had been ruled unfit for duty in 1943.

Yet his status was confirmed in September 1944 when he went to the White House and met the president. Franklin Roosevelt had already made public statements linking American politics with its popular music, but this meeting was a shrewdly taken opportunity to reaffirm that adolescents were a vital part of American society.

The Columbus Day riots coincided with the invention of the teenage market. In September 1944, the magazine Seventeen was launched, which declared to its primarily female readers: "you are the bosses of the business". It was an immediate success, selling half a million copies. Seventeen offered a non-patronising approach that struck a chord, and it focused Americans on the barely recognised purchasing power of adolescents: estimated at $750m (£465m).

The hysteria that surrounded Sinatra in October 1944 came at a crux time in the history of America and its youth. It reaffirmed the collective power of young women, and how they have always been central to pop._________________"Hey bird dog get away from my chick
Hey bird dog better get away quick
Bird dog you better find
A chicky little of your own ! "

Sinatra, apparently playing himself, takes a "smoke" break from a recording session. He sees more than 10 boys chasing one boy and intervenes, first with dialogue; then with a little speech (including some guided imagery). His main points are that we are "all" Americans and that just one American's blood is as good as another, all our religions are equally to be respected.

The House I Live In was a 1945 short film written by Albert Maltz and made by producer Frank Ross and actor Frank Sinatra to oppose anti-Semitism and prejudice at the end of World War II.
It received a special Academy Award in 1946._________________"Hey bird dog get away from my chick
Hey bird dog better get away quick
Bird dog you better find
A chicky little of your own ! "

What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see;
A certain word, democracy.
What is America to me?

The house I live in,
A plot of earth, a street,
The grocer and the butcher,
Or the people that I meet;
The children in the playground,
The faces that I see,
All races and religions,
That's America to me.

The place I work in,
The worker by my side,
The little town or city
Where my people lived and died.
The howdy and the handshake,
The air and feeling free,
And the right to speak my mind out,
That's America to me.

The things I see about me,
The big things and the small,
The little corner newsstand,
And the house a mile tall;
The wedding and the churchyard,
The laughter and the tears,
And the dream that's been a growing
For a hundred-fifty years.

The town I live in,
The street, the house, the room,
The pavement of the city,
And the garden all in bloom;
The church, the school, the clubhouse,
The million lights I see,
But especially the people;
That's America to me.

The house I live in,
My neighbors white and black,
The people who just came here,
Or from generations back;
The town hall and the soapbox,
The torch of liberty,
A home for all God's children;
That's America to me.

The words of old Abe Lincoln,
Of Jefferson and Paine,
Of Washington and Jackson
And the tasks that still remain;
The little bridge at Concord,
Where Freedom's fight began,
Our Gettysburg and Midway
And the story of Bataan.

The house I live in,
The goodness everywhere,
A land of wealth and beauty,
With enough for all to share;
A house that we call Freedom,
A home of Liberty,
And it belongs to fighting people
That's America to me.

The song was memorably covered in later years by Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, and Josh White. Sam Cooke also covered it. Sinatra continued to include it in his repertory, performing it in the White House. Bill Cosby used a recording to open some of his shows in 2002._________________"Hey bird dog get away from my chick
Hey bird dog better get away quick
Bird dog you better find
A chicky little of your own ! "

Lee Mortimer was what we would refer to today as a gossip columnist. He seemed to have a personal vendetta against Sinatra, and never missed an opportunity to disparage or insult Sinatra and his fans. Sinatra and Mortimer had a few run-ins. Sinatra, enraged at being referred to as a "“dago" and Mortimer attempting to tie him to the Mafia and the Communist Party, punched Mortimer in the nose in March 1947 at Ciro's. The Hearst papers (who employed Mortimer) promptly began attacking Sinatra full force.

April 9, 1947 arraignment (Mortimer is on the right)

Anticipating a long jury trial, Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM film studios where Sinatra was a contract player), encouraged Sinatra to settle out of court with Mortimer, which he did ($9,000).

But Sinatra got his revenge. In a broader sense, the singer's career survived Mortimer's smear campaign. But specifically, years after that, Frank, loaded, urinated on Mortimer's grave while reportedly saying "I'll bury the bastards. I'll bury them all."

Frank : "The only time I had any physical contact with a newspaper man was with a man (Lee Mortimer) who is now dead (he spits out the word dead), who said some pretty nasty things about me in a column for about two years, and they were all gross lies. He once said something to me in person (at Ciro's); I reached the boiling point, and it was all over. Frankly, if he were alive and he said it to me again, I would do it again, because he was just that kind of a man."_________________"Hey bird dog get away from my chick
Hey bird dog better get away quick
Bird dog you better find
A chicky little of your own ! "